Teresa Reviews Mrs. McGinty’s Dead (2015)

Teresa reviews Mrs. McGinty’s Dead (2015) and thought a combination of French elegance and missed opportunities.

Original title: Mademoiselle Mac Ginty est morte (Miss Mac Ginty has died)
From Les Petits Meurtres d’Agatha Christie, Season Two

(c)2023 by Teresa Peschel

Fidelity to text: 3 knives

Working in the three leads altered the plot, big and small, but you’ll recognize the plot beats.

Quality of film: 2½ knives

This could have been so, so, so, so much better. The opening was so promising and stylish! And then came all the usual failures I’ve come to know so well.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

Also, follow Teresa’s discussion of these movie on her podcast.

Integrating our three leads (Inspector Swan Laurence, his secretary Marlene, and girl reporter Avril) into Agatha’s stories is always going to be problematic. Those character types — especially an inspector — appear in Agatha’s stories, but nearly always as one-offs. Agatha didn’t create a regular, recurring cast of characters in which you get to know every bit of their backstory over the course of dozens of novels. You don’t get much backstory for her very few regulars, other than Tommy & Tuppence. Even with them, Agatha was inconsistent.

But TV shows can’t do this. At their best, when books are adapted for ongoing series, you explore the characters, learn all about where they’re from, meet their friends and relatives, and you enjoy an overall arc showing growth and development until those characters become realer than real. In case you’re wondering, I never watched soaps until I got a job at Woolco at the dawn of the ’80s. My lunch hour coincided with The Young and the Restless. I did not have control over the breakroom TV and, despite my best intentions, got sucked in to what everyone else wanted to watch. I remembered those characters and their complex lives for years afterwards. Good storytelling does that.

Sadly, that has yet to happen in Les Petits. It could have! Goodness knows Agatha provided plenty of inspiration. The occasional glimpse we’ve gotten to date into Laurence’s, Marlène’s, and Avril’s lives are interesting. They have family and friends — even Avril, an orphan raised in what sounds like a grim, Dickensian facility. We’ve met Marlène’s evil sister. We’ve met Laurence’s loopy spiritualist mother.

In this episode, we get a twofer. We learn more about Laurence’s background, providing a possible explanation why he’s the man he is and why his mother is a loopy spiritualist. We also learn who Alice Avril married to get out of the orphanage as quickly as she could.

It’s Robert Vasseur, exactly the kind of loser dweeb sad sack Avril would choose since she’s repeatedly demonstrated since episode one that she can’t consider — ever — the consequences of her actions. He more than fills the role of James Bentley, loser dweeb sad sack who’s convicted of murdering Mrs. McGinty in the novel despite the investigating officer (Superintendent Spence) knowing in his bones that a limp dishrag like Bentley didn’t kill her.

Commissaire Laurence fulfills Poirot’s role as well as Superintendent Spense’s. Poor writing and his hate/hate relationship with Avril means that even as he’s investigating — knowing in his bones a loser dweeb sad sack like Rober Vasseur didn’t cut the old lady’s throat — you won’t understand why he doesn’t take the easy answer as Tricard demands he do. The only reason shown onscreen for searching for another suspect is Laurence likes to be difficult, not that his policeman’s instinct says Vasseur isn’t the killer.

Vasseur charges out of Mlle. Mac Ginty’s flat covered in blood and terrified. He shows up at Avril’s apartment (how did he know where she lived? No explanation) and begs for sanctuary. She reluctantly agrees.

Avril heads straight to the expensive block of flats that Mac Ginty … owned? Worked at as the paid landlady and housekeeper for the true owner? You won’t learn. The building is rather posh (those interiors! Miles of polished woodwork! Fancy decorator accents! Multiroom flats big enough for families! Professional shrink offices!) so you wonder: how did Vasseur afford even a single room there? You won’t learn this detail either, making the ending even more out of left field.

As is her nature, when confronted by Laurence about Vasseur’s whereabouts, Avril refuses to say something as basic as “I was married to that dweeb loser sad sack and I know for a fact he couldn’t harm a fly.” Remember, as part of the Lille police force, Laurence has easy access to public records including marriages. Nor does she say anything as basic as “He forced his way into my apartment and I know it looks bad but he’s my ex.”

No, everything the script forces her to do makes her situation worse. The idea — I’m guessing here — was to set up her educational beat-down of her ex in the jail cell. But she could have told Laurence the truth and still ended up in jail with her ex and then she’d have been really furious. Also, Lille may be a poor backwater city, but it only has one jail cell at police headquarters? Meaning they jail men and women together? Unsupervised? That’s hard to believe too, but the script demanded Avril beat up her ex-husband and jails make for better settings.

Meanwhile, Marlène meets Michael Doutremont (Robin Upward). He’s a smarmy playwright living with his mother, Louise Doutremont (Laura Upward) in a large, posh flat in the same building. Mac Ginty cleaned their flat. He horns in on the investigation because as a writer, the murder is fabulous material. Michael convinces Marlène (against all the evidence we’ve seen) that she’s great actress material.

Laurence gradually interviews everyone in very truncated scenes because too much time was wasted watching Marlène and Michael or Avril and Robert Vasseur. Who exactly was putting pressure on headquarters from higher up in Paris? Hélène Schmit’s fiancé, apparently, but you’ll never meet him. Hélène — since all women turn into tarts when they meet Laurence — tries to seduce him and fails. I’d have liked to have seen more of Régine Molon, resident gossip with a serious beehive hairdo. I’d also like to know how she afforded to live in that building.

There’s also the story about the Santini family (roughly parallel to the Wetherby family in the novel). In addition to there being not nearly enough story about stepdaughter Béatrice’s craziness, mom Deborah was a middle-aged blonde strongly resembling Louise Doutremont, making it hard to tell them apart. Hélène was also blonde and at times, I wasn’t sure if she was one of the other women. Better casting would have ensured less confusion.

Because so much time was wasted not getting to know the principals, we also didn’t get a set-up for the inane ending. Avril sensibly declines taking Rober Vasseur back even though he did use some of his bloodstained money to pay off her back rent. But we’re told that he inherited Mlle. Mac Ginty’s money! And there was a lot of it! Why would she do this other than it let the script kick Avril again? This could have been so easily fixed with a few lines of gossipy dialogue from Régine about how the old woman liked Robert Vasseur because he reminded her of her own loser dweeb sad sack son, now long dead and gone. That’s why he got the room he rented at a reduced rate even though he’s a drunk bum. Because she liked him and had no one else in the world to leave a big pile of money to.

***alice upbraids husband***

This could have been so much better.